(Bloomberg) – Brazilian state-controlled oil producer Petrobras’s P-52 offshore manufacturing platform has been shut down for the final 9 months after a flammable gasoline leak and doesn’t but have a timetable to return again on-line, the corporate says.
A working group that features specialists from Petrobras’s analysis middle has till October to finalize its evaluation of choices for resuming operations, Petrobras’s government director of engineering, expertise and innovation Renata Baruzzi mentioned in a Thursday interview. It stays unclear whether or not the platform will resume manufacturing this yr, she mentioned.
The emergency shutdown final October is suspected to have been brought on by a rupture in a gas-lift riser related to the platform. An inspection of the platform’s remaining gas-lift risers recognized comparable degradation in one other riser.
Brazil’s oil regulator, often known as ANP, mentioned it instructed Petrobras in December to not resume operations till it had accomplished an investigation into the failure, applied corrective measures and demonstrated that no essential operational security dangers remained.
“Petrobras has but to offer the ANP with proof that these circumstances have been met,” the company mentioned in an emailed response to Bloomberg Information.
P-52 is one in all 4 platforms producing oil and gasoline on the Roncador area, which is operated by Petroleo Brasileiro SA with a 75% stake, and accomplice Equinor ASA with the remaining.
The sector is situated at Campos Basin, the place manufacturing peaked in 2011 after which began to fall off. Petrobras is trying to revitalize Campos’s older fields, with a $19 billion spending plan outlined within the 2026–30 strategic plan.
Situated off the northern coast of Rio de Janeiro state and lengthening into southern Espirito Santo in Brazil’s southeast, Campos Basin made Petrobras a significant offshore producer within the late twentieth century.
The P-52 oil platform started operations in 2007 with a design capability of 180,000 bopd. In response to Baruzzi, nevertheless, P-52 had been producing properly under that degree, at about 35,000 bpd. Not one of the platforms within the Campos Basin are presently working at full capability, she mentioned.